The highest point in the Republic of Suriname is Juliana Top (1,230 m).

Eighty percent of Suriname is covered with tropical rainforest.

The Central Suriname Nature Reserve is a World Heritage site.

Early inhabitants of Suriname included the Arawak and the Carib people.

Christopher Columbus, in the service of Spain, sighted the coast of present-day Suriname in 1498.

Suriname was claimed by the Spanish in 1593.

British colonists settled in Suriname in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 Suriname became a Dutch possession while the British had gained New Amersterdam (New York) in the Treaty of Breda, 1697.

Suriname was formerly known as Dutch Guiana.

The Historic Inner City of Paramaribo is a World Heritage site. Paramaribo dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Jodensavanne, in the Para district, was a plantation founded by European Jews in the seventeenth century. It was abandoned after a fire in 1832.

African slaves were brought to Suriname to work on the coffee and sugar plantations.

Slaves who escaped from the plantations formed settlements. These people were known as Maroons.

Slavery was abolished in 1863. Indentured labour from China, India, and Indonesia replaced slave labour.

Bauxite was discovered in Suriname in the early twentieth century.

The Aluminium Company of America started mining operations in Suriname in 1916.

Surinamers gained internal government in 1954.

Suriname achieved full independence from the Netherlands in 1975.

Following Suriname's independence, thousands of workers migrated to the Netherlands.

Suriname's state-owned banana company closed in 2002.

Floods in Suriname left over twenty thousand people homeless in May 2006.

Following a dispute with the government over the development of a new bauxite mine, the mining company BHP Billiton decided to cease operations in Suriname by 2010.